Jenny's response #2
Race, gender, culture and science are all ideas that deeply affected each other in 18th century. Schiebingers’s expose of the 18th century sciences and its history linked race and gender with culture and culture with science. Schiebinger’s ultimate message was to make awareness that science is constantly being shaped by culture, thus science’s past will affect current science. Schiebinger’s exposure of 18th century science seems like an ideology in crisis, because she led us to see how confused society was and how power hungry these scientists and naturalists were: “ European medical men centered their studies of race on males because […] new justifications were required for slavery and for the continued disenfranchisement of males of different skin color but often of equal property holdings […] In like manner, medical men focused their scrutiny of sexual difference on Europeans because the greatest political challenge came from their own countrywomen (183).�
Scientists and Naturalists pretended to base their social critique on natural science and they have had to force the facts to fit their theories. We were able to review 18th century scientists and naturalists’ scientific works, in it their massive exaggerations of sexual flowers, mammaes, apes, and Hottentot’s apron, all historical examples affected by racist and sexist culture of this time. The author allows us to examine science as nurtured and not natured: “The point is to appreciate how knowledge has been molded historically […] what I have tried to show is that knowledge was shaped by patterns if inclusion and exclusion from the scientific community and, more importantly, by the social an political struggles shaping those patterns […] the investigation of sexual and racial difference a priority of the medical sciences, cannot be blamed on the shortsightedness of a few individuals alone, but rather can be traced to broader social trends of which sciences was a part (210)� I believe that Schiebinger is saying that the origin to this sexist and racists culture by power hunger is embedded in our history, our culture and our sciences and it affects everyone to this day and will continue until we seek the justifications of asking why and rebuild our values.